Re: Plate tectonics - Back to the FAQS

From: George (george_at_wtfiswrongwithyou.com)
Date: 02/04/05 

Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 02:28:22 GMT

"Hank Oredson" <horedson@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:w9AMd.5342$Nn1.3635@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> Tell me about that factor of ten to the seventh power.
> Or perhaps ten to the ninth power, as another poster pointed out.
>
> --
>
> ... Hank
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
> http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli
> "don findlay" <don@tower.net.au> wrote in message
> news:1107459806.742600.213990@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>> Q16 But surely the framework is very important, surely that's what
>> steers the whole ship?
>> A16 Of course it is, ...but it's in the nature of science that it
>> must be a consensus thing. It has to be a group effort. Even though
>> one person might initially construct it, it's only valid when consensus
>> ratifies it, and appropriates it for itself. The framework is a
>> consensus 'thing', it is not for the domain of the individual. That's
>> why nobody answers when anyone asks a question that doesn't quite fit
>> within the schedule. It is not given to any one person to answer.
>> Everybody looks to somebody else to take the initiative. Science,
>> when you boil it down, is very much a headless chook.

If you really believe that, then perhaps you should abandon the effort, and go
back to being a televangelist. By the way, when are YOU going to give up on
transform faults and realize that your vision for them doesn't "fit" with
reality?

>> Q17. No puns please, this is a serious business.
>> A17. Is it? Well, anyhow, it is. And it's obviously where
>> science breaks down, because that's the conundrum science always has to
>> face - how to integrate new stuff into the consensus milieu when peer
>> review is about maintaining the status quo, maintaining the goose that
>> lays the golden egg which is the consensus view which presides like a
>> deity over the headless chook of science, ..the chook that spends most
>> of its time running about in circles, pecking here and scratching
>> there with its cocked inquisitive eye, and is happy doing just that.
>> That's what it was born to do, ..that and lay eggs. It doesn't know
>> what direction is. It's secure in its pen, presided over by consensus.
>> It doesn't even know that all the other chooks have no direction
>> either. It doesn't know the meaning of the word. To it, the farmyard
>> with all its pecking and scratching and order and hemmed-in-ness, and
>> its attraction for pecking each others' bums is simply what it's all
>> about.

You're confused, Don boy. New ideas are incorporated into the scheme of things
all the time. The rate of scientific discovery has never been greater. The
problem is not how to incorporate new ideas. The problem is weeding out the bad
ones (like those who insist on hollow earth and earth expansion theories). And
even those aren't really such an insurrmountable problem, since most of the
people (you know who you are) who espouse such nonsense are self-defeatists
anyway. The irrational, and unscientific spew you keep posting is a prime
example.

<snipped the remaining ignoramous drool>

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